


Debriefing

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Troll-Fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Sigrun's battalion returns from their first outing into the Silent World. They have stories to tell.





	Debriefing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unlos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unlos/gifts).



> Your request for Sigrun and Solveig made me smile; I hope this does it justice!

**Late Summer of Year 76, Dalsnes**

The songs of the Third Dalsnes Battalion came down the mountains before the Hunters did, loud enough to rattle the longhouse windows. 

General Solveig Eide nearly spilled her coffee onto the paperwork spread out over her desk. Asbjørn, who had been knitting by the fire - the summer was rainy, with a chill that came through every crevice - nearly jabbed a needle into his thigh.

"Did we ever make that much noise coming back, do you remember?" he asked, putting the beginnings of his knitted sweater aside. "Unless they want to bring a giant or three down on us..." 

He gave his wife a crooked grin regardless, showing the tooth gap that always made Solveig a little weak in the knees, and that'd been the thing she'd first fallen in love with - not any less now, but relief won out, and she settled for pecking him on the nose before heading out the door. Anything - _anything_ \- to get her away from her paperwork, even if it meant overseeing the gaggle of over-excited returning recruits before the evening's entertainment could start.

"I'm sure returning like that, they've learned to handle a giant or three. See you at debriefing!"

*

It had been a long morning and a longer afternoon, and when Solveig took her place on the mead hall's dais, the first of the Generals to arrive, she pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off the beginnings of a headache. At least Asbjørn's prediction about giants following them home had not come true. She reminded herself again that the evening would be more rewarding than the afternoon had been. 

Debriefing had long since turned into the stuff of legend in Dalsnes, growing in the telling every year and in every new recruit's mouth. At worst, it promised an evening in company, at best, an evening that'd give rise to legends and honour that far outlasted a warrior's lifetime - they still sang of the first Sigrun Eide née Larsen, after all. And it wasn't a lie or even an exaggeration that, from all Solveig had gleaned herding kids and cats, it had been an effective and admirable run for the Third Dalsnes Battalion. Especially considering that they had only been on their orientation run after their graduation from training into active service and were made up almost entirely of rookies in their first year. The traditional route ran from Aurland back to Dalsnes on the south shore of the Sognefjord, with loops out of the cleansed area into the Silent World proper.

More than anything else, it was a team-building exercise in 200 kilometers of adverse circumstances, and something of a final exam in Silent World survival, quite aside the troll-fighting practice. As a general rule, not all the rookies came back, sometimes not even all the instructors, and despite the high spirits of the battalion, she hadn't seen her daughter yet. Someone would have taken her aside if there were truly bad news, she knew as much, but she couldn't help a sting of apprehension regardless.

But when the recruits filed in, a while after the rest of the Generals had arrived, Sigrun was there. She carried herself with a note of care in her posture and movements that, to a mother who had learned by painful experience in observing her daughter as she grew (and so did her propensity to get into trouble), it was clear that she'd probably bruised at least one rib. But there was a light Sigrun's eyes her face that made her worn face shine, and the smug, self-satisfied grin tugging on her lips reassured Solveig that she wasn't seriously hurt.

Only a matter of time until she'd find out what exactly had happened. They had something of a debriefing ceremony for the rookies - they'd all of them have to step up and recount their feats, and the rest of the Mead Hall would judge - cheers, clapping, silence, or even, in the rare case that someone had heaped dishonour on themselves, booing loudly. At least as much of the display was bragging, storytelling and posturing, and as long as it didn't stray too far from the official files that'd be issued for review later, no one minded some exaggeration, or even challenges to the interrogators. In short, a spectacle.

Solveig, remembering the glow of people cheering for her, looked forward to Sigrun's report, and the drinking that'd accompany the evening. She began to relax, stretching out her legs under the table and leaning into the furs of her seat. 

She could hear the rolling of barrels from the kitchens, where the servers made ready to serve mead and beer, while the buzzing recruits waited to be called to begin. She played with the coins in her pocket, slipping them through her fingers. It was something of a tradition to reward good performances with a tossed coin or two from the captains and generals, and it didn't do to be stingy even with the more boring positions as long as they did a good job - map readers, cat handlers and medics, especially. All of them were vital, but it was mages, scouts and hunters, who, as a rule, saw the most action and came back with the best stories. 

No such luck, when the debriefing began after a few choice words from Trond that made the buzz of excitement quiet to a whisper. Alphabetical order declared that Antonsen, Åsne went first, a lanky young woman with a black A-grade tomcat stretched like a scarf across her shoulders, nervously clearing her throat. The rumble of her cat could be heard all the way up to the dais. He made to lick Ẳsne's hair, but a sharply whispered "Loki!" in the middle of her account made him quiet down again.

Well, she certainly could handle cats. Solveig tossed a coin when the cat handler finished her story. There was moderate applause; she'd managed to make her tasks of marching through drizzle with a backpack of cat food seem funny, at least, and included a touch of epic in one cat's battle with its brush after a fight - a more fearsome foe than the troll they'd vanquished, indeed. Loki the cat slowly blinked at them from yellow eyes, apparently content. 

It went on, with recruits stumbling through their accounts much as they must have stumbled along the trail. The junior medic, looking more tired than most, muttered something about sore throats and soggy, blistered feet with her eyes raised to the roof, and finished with a request for more troll-related injuries, of which there hadn't been many reports yet. Solveig sipped at her mead while beside her Asbjørn finished his second mug and called for another, and on her other side, Trond scoffed about callous youths who hadn't understood the benefits of healthy, competent soldiers. 

Solveig squinted at the list in his hands. There were a few more recruits before it was Sigrun's turn, and all she could do was not to fall asleep right then and there when one of Sigrun's friends, a trainee of Asbjørn's, produced a diary and began to recite a battle - finally a battle - in glowing terms, but Solveig had never been one for verse. "... body-wound suffered / the direful demon, damage incurable / was seen on his shoulder, his sinews were shivered / his body did burst. To Beow --- erm. Björn! Björn! That's me. Yes. Uhm. Me --- was given / Glory in battle..."

Solveig rolled her eyes. 

At least, she thought, that Asbjørn liked it, clapping and generously rewarding the recruit with a handful of coins that clattered over the floorboards before he could catch them. He didn't seem to care whether it was true or where it came from, although the recruit did look in shape to tear a giant heads to toes with his pinky finger. 

"Eide, Sigrun Solveig," came the announcement - _finally_ , Solveig thought and sat up straighter against the furs on her chair that she'd slowly been sinking into. Sigrun stepped into the light in the center of the hall, and bowed stiffly, grinning.

"Sigrun Solveig Eide, _fødselsnummer_ : 15085899896, reporting for duty, mom - _ma'am_! And sirs."

Laughter in the hall, Sigrun sketched another bow, and Solveig inclined her head in acknowledgment of the supposed faux-pas. Sigrun was a daddy's girl through and through, but impressing Asbjørn, who returned every ounce of his daughter's love in the same exuberant way she gave it was not very hard. Solveig prided herself on some restraint; she made Sigrun work - not for affection, but for the praise she wanted, and if Sigrun was vying for her attention now, this would be good. 

It better be. 

"Please begin, Recruit Eide," Solveig said, schooling her face into impartiality. Asbjørn's face bloomed into a grin that matched that of his daughter. Family resemblance in the Eide line was strong. 

"Well!" Sigrun began, resting her fists on her hips and throwing a challenging look around the hall. "Who else of you boring slackers here ever fought a bat beast giant? It had more faces than you could punch in in your life! I went ahead with scoutyhead and mage-butt back there" - she pointed to the rest of her team at their table - "and that's what we found in the second tunnel out of Aurland, it probably wandered in in between sometime last year and now, because no way anyone could have missed that! So we were wet and super miserable, so it was good to warm up with some fighting, except I never wanna see something like that in my life again! So we had our lamps trained ahead, and up ahead in the dark something glints, and then _more_ things glint. Eyes, like there were stars on the tunnel ceiling, on and on. And then they started squeaking, I thought I'd go deaf forever! And then the whole thing dropped from the ceiling at us and started just… _rolling_ toward us like a... trollvalanche! They can't fly, you know how bats beastify, right? Except these were all mostly connected into one big thing." Her face twisted in disgust that left Solveig no doubt that that part of her story was true. In many ways, Sigrun still wore her heart on her sleeve. 

"So mage-butt was throwing a fit and we had to drag her behind us while she's drawing a rune and trying spells, and we're stabbing and stomping the things that catch up to us, and the skulls go pop under our boots - at least it was squishy! But just think if it'd reached the city! Oh, and I punched a porpoise beast in the face when it looked out of the water while we were on the boat to Aurland. My fist went in this far!" She indicated something around her elbow. Bam. It died. And the bat giant died, too, when Cleanser-boobs finally figured out we'd not come running and shouting for nothing and got moving to throw some grenades at it."

She paused, and extended her arms, mimicking the noise of an explosion. "Boom! We had to find a way around the tunnel after that." 

Cheers in the hall. Asbjørn was wiping at his eyes, shining with pride. "My baby girl is growing up so fast."

Solveig had to admit to herself that she was impressed. In spite of the running, it seemed they'd kept their nerves. But she had stories that she'd never shared with Sigrun, curated carefully for this moment. Oh, this was going to be good.

"Recruit Eide - if you think that is commendable, you have never heard of the giant made up out of thirty-seven seals, a whale and five Icelandic mages, did you?"

Louder cheers from the older service members in the hall. That one - it'd been a gruelling battle, and days and nights of hacking away at things, the first time she'd ever truly been afraid for her life.

"Uhhh…" Sigrun said, blinking at her mother. She didn't seem like she had expected a challenge, only wanted to impress her mother. "... no? I mean, yes. I just didn't know you'd been there for it." 

"I was your age, but they needed all hands that time. It took us two days and nights to hack it to pieces before it went down for good. That was in Year… 49; it came out of the fjord right at Dalsnes, swept our ships aside and broke them to splinters. All we could do was mine up the shore and get stabbing. We stank of rotten fish and seal dreck for weeks after that. I shaved my hair off because I couldn't stand the smell, and that was the fight your father lost his tooth in. If you mean to recount something impressive, you need to try harder." 

"Okay…" Sigrun seemed to pick up what heart she'd lost at her mother's interruption. "The bat giant was the coolest I got, but what about hug-faced face-huggy leggy spider troll?"

Solveig blinked, perplexed. Someone in the hall stifled laughter. "Hug-faced face-huggy… what does that mean, recruit?" 

"Obviously that it was cute! It had a face you'd almost want to hug, at least if it wasn't a troll's face. Except what it did was try to hug _your face_ with the spider legs it grew. And eat you, probably. I stabbed it, though." 

"And put it in my sleeping bag!" came an interjection from behind - the mage belonging to Sigrun's group.

"Just 'cause _you_ pushed me into that patch of nettles!" 

"That was because you - "

Solveig cleared her throat before the bickering could go on. It had the effect of a thunderclap, and effectively silenced both of them. She had to hide a smile to see both faces turn toward her, equally wide-eyed. "Take that outside, recruits - later." 

Sigrun nodded, finally, and saluted. "Yes, ma'am," a sentiment that was meekly echoed by her mage friend. "I have more stories, though. Myrkdalen… had a troll that was a _room_? Just sitting there in that house; when I opened the door looking for the loo it looked me right in the face with its face, but it'd gotten so big that it couldn't fit through! Lots and lots of wriggling, though." 

Solveig countered with an incident from her first proper run when she'd nearly been strangled by a two-legged troll snake, or at least that was what she called it in her memories.  
"Or the troll that was a _blob_!" Sigrun retorted with one of her own, and the gleam in her eyes finally made Solveig smile. Sigrun was starting to enjoy the challenge. 

"Beast walrus!" Solveig tossed out. 

The stories and troll descriptions flew. The hall had long since gotten silent, and Solveig thought she might be able to hear a pin drop in the collective held breaths in between cheers and clashing mugs when the assembled Dalsnes force toasted to some feat or other. 

"Troll with a face like a tooth flower," Sigrun finally said, huffing out a breath that was as much of an admission of defeat as she was going to get. "Tossed me into a rock wall, that's where I got this," she said and pulled her shirt up to reveal a bandage to steady her ribcage. "Right outside Dalsnes, actually." 

Then, Solveig knew her daughter had run out of ammo. There were plenty more stories where hers came from, born from decades in service, but this was Sigrun's big day, so Solveig held them back and finally allowed herself a full smile, closing her fingers around a handful of coins in her pockets.

"Excellent work, recruit Eide. I'm proud of you. Sit do-"

The doors to the mead hall clashed open under the hands of a lookout, some poor sod who'd incurred some penalty that wouldn't let him participate in the debriefing. He stood panting, pale-faced and wild-eyed.

"Giants!" he yelled. " _Three of them!_ " 

In a matter of seconds every single soldier in the hall was on their feet. Solveig made her way to Sigrun, clasping her shoulder. "Let's show them what we're made of, shall we?"


End file.
